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Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Your Tree Needs Nurturing

Just as the plants in our garden need TLC so do our online family trees.

A benefit of online family trees is that they are not static documents like printed genealogies that cannot easily be edited. Online trees are dynamic documents that can be easily added to, corrected and maintained. As I come across Australian family trees on the web I add them to my list of FamilySites on my Delicious account.

How disappointing it is to find trees that were last updated a number of years ago, This morning I found a distant cousin mentioned in an online tree that was last updated in 2005! Some of the trees I have bookmarked have not been updated for nearly ten years.

I find it hard to believe that once researchers publish their tree on the web they consider it a completed task. Families trees keep growing. As new resources are discovered, records digitised, children born, ancestors pass away and cousins appear from nowhere we are presented with new information to add to our trees. We should nurture our trees.

I try to update my online tree Geniaus Family Tree every fortnight or whenever someone shares a good chunk of information with me, I feel I owe it to those who share with me to publish their offerings promptly. I am not suggesting that everyone should update as often as I do but a couple of times per year or whenever a number of significant changes are made would be reasonable.

By adding corrections and additions to our trees we raise our chances of making new connections with other interested parties.